Boys Life

this is from Sim’s mouth, so I guess he’s come to grips with it. Anyway, Donny Blaylock used to sell moonshine to Sim, and Sim told me Donny and him got drunk up in the woods one night-the night that meteor fell up there near Union Town -and Donny told him things.”
    “Things?” Dad prodded. “What things?”
    “Donny told Sim he’d killed a man,” Mr. Dollar said. “Didn’t tell him the why, the when, or the who. Just that he’d killed a man and he was glad of it.”
    “Does J.T. know about this?”
    “Nope. And he won’t hear it from me, either. I don’t want to get J.T. killed. You ever see Biggun Blaylock?”
    “No.”
    “Big as a moose and full of the devil. If I told J.T. what Sim had told me, he’d have to go out and find the Blaylocks. If he did find ’em, which I doubt he could, that bunch would hang him up by his heels and cut his throat open like a-” Again Mr. Dollar looked at me, sitting there, all eyes and ears, behind a Hawkman comic book. “Well, I kinda figure that’d be the last of our sheriff,” Mr. Dollar finished.
    “The Blaylocks don’t own the county!” Dad said. “If they committed a murder, they ought to pay for it!”
    “That’s right, they should,” Mr. Dollar agreed as he returned to his clipping. “Biggun came in here last November to pick up a pair of boots he was havin’ resoled. Remember that, Jazzman?”
    “Shore do. Fine, expensive boots. I was scared to death of gettin’ a scuff on ’em.”
    “You know what Biggun said as he was payin’ for his boots?” Mr. Dollar asked my father. “He said they were his stompin’ boots, and anybody who got under ’em wouldn’t be standin’ up again. I figured that to mean he didn’t want anybody messin’ in his business. So who’s gonna be fool enough to go lookin’ to get killed by the Blaylocks?”
    “That’s what happened to that fella at the bottom of the lake,” the Jazzman said. “He was messin’ in the Blaylocks’ business.” Bidness, he pronounced it.
    “I don’t care if they brew up ’shine and sell it outta the back of their trucks,” Mr. Dollar went on. “No harm done to me. I don’t care if they fix the stock car races, because I’m not a gambler. I don’t care what they do to them fallen angels at Grace Stafford’s, because I’m a family man.”
    “Hold on,” Dad said. “What about Grace Stafford’s place?”
    “Ain’t her place. She just manages it. The Blaylocks own it, lock, stock, and hair curlers.”
    Dad grunted softly. “I didn’t know that.”
    “Oh, yeah!” Mr. Dollar applied lather to the back of Dad’s neck and worked a straight razor along the leather strop. “The Blaylocks are rakin’ it in, that’s for sure. Makin’ a killin’ off the Air Force fellas.” With a steady hand, he began shaving my father’s neck. “The Blaylocks are too much for J.T. to handle. It’d take Edgar Hoover himself to throw ’em in jail.”
    “Wyatt Earp could do it.” Mr. Cathcoate spoke up now. “If he was still alive, I mean.”
    “I reckon he could at that, Owen.” Mr. Dollar glanced at me, gauging my interest, and then back to the old man. “Hey, Owen! I don’t think young Cory here knows about you and Wyatt Earp!” Mr. Dollar winked at me conspiratorially. “Tell him the tale, why don’t you?”
    Mr. Cathcoate didn’t answer for a moment, but it was his turn and he didn’t move any of the checkers pieces. “Naw,” he replied at last. “I’ll let it rest.”
    “Come on, Owen! Tell the boy! You want to hear it, don’t you, Cory?” Before I could say yes or no, Mr. Dollar plowed on. “See there? He wants to hear it!”
    “Long time gone,” Mr. Cathcoate said quietly.
    “Eighteen hundred and eighty-one, wasn’t it? October twenty-sixth at Tombstone, Arizona? You were all of nine years old?”
    “That’s right.” Mr. Cathcoate nodded. “I was nine years old.”
    “And tell the boy what you did on that day.”
    Mr. Cathcoate sat staring at the checkers board. “Go on, Owen,” the Jazzman urged in a gentle voice. “You tell him.”
    “I… killed a man on that day,” Mr. Cathcoate said. “And I saved the life of Wyatt Earp at the O.K. Corral.”
    “There you go, Cory!” Mr. Dollar grinned. “Bet you didn’t know you were sittin’ in here with a real live gunfighter, did you?” The way Mr. Dollar said that, though, made me think he didn’t believe a word of it, and that he enjoyed goading Mr. Cathcoate about it.
    Of course